Savage Orc Totem Pole

Wow! At last I have finished this project, and it has been an awesome one!

Behold below the completed Savage Orc Totem Pole. It is a mostly stone structure, with the effigy heads of Gork and Mork, on wheels, being towed by wild boars. There are two fervent Orc worshippers strapped in for the ride, and an Orc Boar Herder just to make sure the boars go kind of in the right direction...

The pictured shaman was assembled and painted by the client and sent to me to help with laying out the piece, and also for colour matching.

One thing which is most prominent in this piece is the use of actual miniatures! This is really a first for Custom Terrain - I must say it felt good too get out the miniatures paints and brushes and flex my painting chops, it's been quite a long while (my time is of course mostly occupied with terrain).

The key goal with the painting was to match the client's colour scheme and painting style as closely as possible. It was a fun challenge, as I've not really painted in this style before (I tend to lean towards a lot of flatbrushing and wet blending when I paint my minis). That said they turned out great - the painting style is almost like something out of a graphic novel, highly stylised, I really like it and will use it again.

In terms of the design considerations, there were a few compromises I had to make for the sake of functionality, portability, and storage:

The first was the battery. Really the only place for it was in the undercarriage, however I decided against fitting it to the bottom of the totem pole, instead letting it sit on the table surface. The entire piece is for display only, and is to be placed on the Savage Orc Display Board I did a little earlier. As such the battery is more or less invisible to line of sight whilst on the display board (all of the photos below were taken with the battery installed). If the client wishes, they may paint the battery to camouflage it a little (I can't do it myself as the battery can't be posted due to mailing restrictions..).

The second area where functionality won, was the orc worshippers. I had toyed with the idea of adding in extra strapping/rope like that attached to the boars, to emphasise how they are tied onto the pole. However, they really need to be removable for postage and storage reasons making it impractical to follow up on this idea. I did however choose arms and legs specifically which have bindings around the wrists and ankles, and I think this provides a suitable visual explanation as to how they are actually hanging on there ;)

That's a few different points covered for those who are interested in the design aspects of the project :P If you'd like to see a video, I will be posting a link to it shortly after it is uploaded: